The Significance of Visual Literacy in Today's World
Visual literacy is increasingly crucial in our modern society, with children learning and communicating through images. Understanding the hidden messages in visual content is vital for effective communication and learning. As technology evolves, the connection between visuals and knowledge becomes more pronounced, emphasizing the need for visual literacy education. From recognizing visual cues to interpreting complex combinations of text and images, visual literacy shapes how we perceive and engage with the world around us. Starting from infancy, visual aids play a key role in early learning, highlighting the foundational importance of visual literacy skills in cognitive development.
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Visual Literacy Children live in a visual world and the ability to read visual images is becoming a vital skill. Young people learn more than half of what they know from visual information
What is Visual Literacy? According to Merriam-Webster, visual literacy is the ability to recognize and understand ideas conveyed through visible actions or images. From an educational institution's standpoint, visual literacy is the ability to see, understand and, ultimately, communicate visually. Visual literacy has everything to do with learning and understanding a given message. It is a process of learning that generates interest, curiosity and passion over something that is hidden in the visual creation. Visual literacy speaks more of the hidden message behind the visual piece. Visual literacy is an understanding of what is not written, but what is presented using signs, symbols, icons and colours.
A Changing World Here are eight words or terms that either didn t exist or were relatively unheard of before the beginning of this century. Do you know, or can you guess, their meaning? What do you think the connection is between them? infographic kinetic typography screenager binge-watch emoji meme vine augmented reality
The Connection The point is that they are all connected in some way to looking or watching. They are representative of the impact that images via screens have had on our lives in the last fifteen years. As a result, there has been a renewed interest in visual literacy and how it might be taught.
Old and New The need to understand and interpret images isn t new. But in this century, the information that our students receive in English increasingly comes through a complex combination of text and image. Our students must learn to process both words and pictures. To be visually literate, they must learn to read (consume/interpret) images and write (produce/use) visually rich communications .
The Importance of Visual Literacy When infants reach the 9-month mark, they begin to recognize things, and parents oftentimes offer visual aids to help them identify what they need and communicate what they want. We offer pictures of their toys. We teach them how to identify colours by showing pictures. Similarly, as they grow older, we rely on visual aids to teach them the names of animals, places and things. Visual literacy, otherwise known as visual skill, is the foundation of learning. Children read pictures before they master verbal skills.
Images=Meaning Visual literacy allows individual learners to interpret art and visual media as they come into contact with them. In today's visual Internet, visual literacy is a skill and a necessary ability to decipher what is shared online and distributed in any other form of visual media. Example-A perfect example of this are road and safety signs. When you learn to drive, you are often given a set of local road signs and safety booklets to memorize and know by heart. Understanding these basic signs will help you greatly when travelling or driving to another place, city or country. Though road and safety signs vary in presentation, their meanings are universal.
A Deeper Connection Visual literacy offers a deeper connection with all kinds of texts and encourages analytical interpretations of what is represented and their hidden meanings. It is a skill that eliminates barriers to learning. See how non-verbal speakers rely on images to convey their thoughts and communicate with images. Example-An example of people with great visual literacy skills are archaeologists, who rely on engraved drawings on caves and stones to understand how the world worked long before the modern era. Stories of ancient history made it to our books and online media distribution databases because there are highly skilled professionals who spent their life understanding visual messages.
Visualisation Learners actually visualize what they are reading to get a better understanding of what is being told in the text. It happens to each and every one of us when we read something foreign to our understanding: We paint the picture of what it is and try to connect the visuals in our head. A great example of learners visualising what they read are doctors. While reading the procedures of their next heart surgeries, surgeons imagine the actual operations and the movements of their hands as they stitch up the patient. In preparation for tumour-removal procedures, doctors print the tumour to get a good visual of how they can safely remove it without rupturing the patient's heart, spleen or pancreas.
Persuasion and Bias Visual literacy guides consumers in their buying decisions. Having an understanding of what emotions are being evoked by a piece of visual advertising teaches consumers to be careful and sceptical in advocating product brands and company service advertisements. Recognising persuasion and bias in the digital age is hugely important as vast amounts of information and news is found everywhere online. For many the very fact that something can be seen online means it must be true and require no verification. Suggested resources- Look at stereotypes and apply questions to images
Sliding Scale The way that we teach Visual Literacy in schools should be progressive. In infants there is a huge focus on Visual literacy (images on ipad) and these develop basic comprehension and understanding of the World around us. These activities might also include attaching images to words and making simple predictions.
Developing Critical thinking As pupils grow older we need to use visual literacy to develop critical skills. These might include discussion and generation of questions based on an image. See/Think/Wonder activities are a good way generate this kind of critical thinking.
See- What do you see? Observation
Think- What do you Think? Inference & Prediction
Wonder- What do you Wonder? Questions -5W s
A Step Further At the upper end of the primary school there are many applications where these critical skills can be taken even further. Using Blooms Stems to analyse images can help develop Higher Order Thinking Skills
Applications across the Curriculum HWB Looking at Adverts/Models/Stereotypes- What do images tell us? Are they true? Why have the producers chosen/manipulated the images? Emotion Works- Reading expression & Body language
Applications across the Curriculum EXA Drama- Tableau/Freeze Frame Artist Study- Picture analysis Music- Linking music to visuals Dance- Story/Emotions read from dance
Applications across the Curriculum Literacy & IDL Writing- Image prompts- Character development-Video Prompts (Inanimate Alice & Literacy Shed)- Talk for Writing program Reading- See/Think/Wonder and other image/video based activities develop, understanding of inferring, prior knowledge & prediction, summarising T & L- individual /pair/group /class opportunities for discussion of images
Cross Cutting Themes Creativity Visual Literacy is at the core of creativity and, as can be seen from the wide range of different applications, can be used as both a source of creativity and the end product. From simple prompts to encourage creativity to creating pieces of work designed to encourage critical thinking in viewers/audience.
Cross Cutting Themes Enterprise Any enterprise project lends itself to consideration of visual literacy From concept design through to advertising these are applications for pupils to consider how images manipulate marketing.
